


By Her Side

by Alixtii



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, First Time, Library, POV Female Charcter, POV Third Person, Past Tense, Sunnydale, Voice Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-17
Updated: 2008-02-17
Packaged: 2017-10-02 16:29:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alixtii/pseuds/Alixtii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Giles takes Buffy to a library to relax. At first, she sees something wrong with that sentence, but is persuaded otherwise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Her Side

**Author's Note:**

> **Timeline/Spoilers:** Between "Never Leave Me" and "Lies My Parents Told Me."

"Thanks for the mochas, Giles," Buffy said as she savored the last drop of hers. "I needed that."

"I would imagine so," Giles remarked dryly. "Needing to be strong for a small army of teenaged girls is a demanding vocation. I imagine you could use time to yourself."

Buffy nodded. "Definitely in need of some serious Buffy time, here."

Giles nodded, looked at Buffy thoughtfully. "Come with me," he said as he finished his mocha. "Let me take you somewhere you can relax."

. . .

"Giles? Sunnydale Public Library is more of a place where _you_ can relax." She stared up at the building, incredulously. "But when I think library, you know what I think of? Hellmouth, 'cause the library I spent pretty much my entire adolescence in was built right on top of one. Not exactly prime relaxation estate."

"I assure you that this library is perfectly safe," Giles answered as he got out of the car. "And that you will be able to relax here. Trust me."

"I trust you with my life," Buffy answered, and she knew that much was true. "I just don't trust you with my attention span."

"Has it ever occurred to you that that may be part of the problem?" Giles asked as he pulled out a screwdriver and began shimmying the door. "You live your life at such a hectic pace, there's no time to breathe."

Buffy made a show of pouting. "'You' as in 'Buffy' or 'you' as in 'you young kids, get off my lawn'?"

"Both. But you--singular--in particular." She followed him into the library. "Just sit down. No, here," he said, and pulled out a leather desk chair from behind the children's librarian's desk and presented it to her.

Buffy sat down. It was comfortable, even more so than the one she had when she was working at Sunnydale High, but not so much so as to justify breaking and entering into the public library.

"Giles?" Buffy called after him as he walked away from her. "You're going towards the kids' books."

Giles looked back at her as if wounded. "I know my way around a library, Buffy."

Buffy shrugged. "Okay, just saying."

He returned with a couple of leather-bound books. "Just lie back, Buffy. Close your eyes."

She did just that, letting her body relax in the librarian's chair as she closed her eyes.

"When Mary Lennox was sent to Missethwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable looking child  ever seen," Giles read, the rich voice enveloping her like a warm blanket she could cuddle up under. She could feel the tension draining out of her body. She could get lost in that voice, its British cadences and smooth tones. Like a Hugh Grant or an Alan Rickman.

Sexy. (Where had thought come from?)

He kept on reading and Buffy kept her eyes closed the whole time, but she didn't fall asleep. She was relaxed, yes--God, she couldn't think of any time she'd been this relaxed, right after sex included--but she held onto every word as he said it, as he related to her the story of how the little English girl found a hidden garden and the cousin who had been hidden from her, how she matured into a healthy young girl and brought joy into the hearts of others.  

"'Across the lawn came the Master of Misselthwaite and he looked as many of them had never seen him. And by his side with his head up in the air and his eyes full of laughter walked as strongly and steadily as any boy in Yorkshire--Master Colin.' The end."

Buffy opened her eyes, looked at Giles, who was sitting in one of the library table chairs he had pulled up next to her chair. "How long have you been reading?"

"Six hours," Giles answered, an apologetic smile on his face.

Buffy stared at him as if he claimed that a hundred years had passed, like Rip van Winkle. "Six hours?" she repeated feebly. It didn't seem like six hours had passed. It felt like--she didn't know how long it felt like, she realized with a start. She had been so lost in Giles' voice that she had lost all sense of time. It could have been mere moments, or a thousand years.

Buffy stood up, and it didn't feel like she had stayed in one spot for six hours. Instead, the sense of relaxation stayed with her, all of her fatigue and frustration fallen away, a new rejuvenated sense of energy infusing her entire body. "Oh, that feels _so_ good, Giles," she said. "I could kiss you right now."

Then, after only a moment's thought, she did just that.

. . .

"I did _not_ expect that," Buffy said after she broke the kiss.

Giles examined her. "As I recall it, you initiated it."

"Yeah," admitted Buffy, "but I didn't really think you'd kiss me back. I thought you'd be all stuffy and British about it, and give me a lecture about the proper relationship between Watchers and Slayers, how it'd be improper."

Giles looked away. "I'm not your Watcher, Buffy. Not anymore. But I'm honored to stand by your side." He paused. "Did you not want me to kiss you back?"

"No," she said without hesitating. "That was what I wanted. Even better than I wanted even. What I would have wanted if I had had any idea you could kiss like that. Although honestly, if I had known, I'd have jumped your bones years ago." She paused, then grimaced. "I can't believe I just said that."

"I'll forgive your choice of idiomatic expression under the circumstances," Giles said, and this time he leaned in to initiate the kiss. As he did so, he slipped his hand under her shirt, unfastened the back of her bra with one hand in the way that even Angel and Spike, with their centuries of experience, had never managed to learn to do. She kissed him harder, pressing her mouth with renewed force against his, as she, reciprocally, began to unfasten his pants.

"Not here," Giles said as he broke the kiss, even as he continued to undress her. "Not in the children's section."

Buffy nodded. It would be much more romantic without the Cat in the Hat watching disapprovingly. "Where then?" she asked as she shimmied out of her panties.

"Reference," Giles answered immediately. (A little too immediately, perhaps. She didn't want to think about what strange kinks an ex-librarian might have, making love in a library.) His breath was already heavy with anticipation.

Buffy nodded. "Race you to the encyclopedias." She felt like an Olympic athlete--the old dead Greek Olympics, not the real ones--as she sprinted across the library in the nude, taking advantage of her Slayer speed to beat Giles easily. He followed, still in his shirt but naked from the waist down, and when he caught up to her he kissed her even as he lifted her and pressed her against the stacks, her shoulder blades against the God only knew how many volumes of the _Encyclopaedia Brittanica Macropedia_, the small of her back against the _Micropedia_s.

Giles had trained Buffy for six years, the three years of high school and the three years afterwards. He knew her body, intimately even if never before like this, knew what it could do and how to make it respond. It was as if he had an intuitive knowledge of what she needed and what she wanted, born of so many years serving as her Watcher, observing her, studying her, watching her. She gasped as he brushed his hand against that spot on the back of her neck that she had thought no one knew about. "God, yes," she let out, the words as much a moan as they were articulate communication.

. . .

"Buffy?" a familiar voice called out as she and Giles exited the library. She started as she saw Scott Hope and what was presumably his boyfriend disengage from behavior against the tree outside the library presumably intended to lead up to activities not so different than those she and Giles had indulged in within it. Scott looked surprised, maybe a bit distressed, by her sudden appearance, until he saw Giles. "Mr. Giles?" he asked, confused, and then mistaken understanding seemed to pass over him as a look of _this explains so much_ passed over his face.

"You really know better than to be out this late in Sunnydale, Scott," Giles responded disapprovingly as he got into the call, betraying nothing, not missing a beat. Buffy, on the other hand, could feel herself turning a bright red.

"You know he's going to be convinced now that we were having sex all through high school," Buffy said once they were both in the car and on their way home.

Giles nodded. "Let him think what he wants."

Buffy smiled. "Mostly, I think he was just jealous of me." And he'd have good reason to be too, Buffy reflected. Here she was with a guy who was not only attractive (sexy in body _and_ voice) and experienced, but also incredibly intelligent and absolutely devoted to her. What more could a girl or boy want? "Giles?"

He glanced over to her. "Yes, Buffy?"

"Thank you," she said, and smiled.

She would have to carry on from now on without a Watcher. But with her friend and new lover by her side, she knew she could do it.


End file.
